Support for extra config inside niri.settings

[Doosty]

I notice that niri development moves quite fast and it is understandable that you cannot always keep up with adding all of the newest features to niri-flake right away. Currently i have my niri configured through niri.settings and if i want to add any non-declared features like shadows or tabs i get an error. I assume i could instead use niri.config, however that overwrites the entirety of my niri.settings, disables stylix support and doesnt offer nix validation if i understand correctly.

Many nix modules allow for some kind of extraConfig option that takes in a raw string which is then appended to the end of the generated config file. Im guessing it is not so simple with kdl, but perhaps some kind of inline raw string function could be allowed similar to spawn so we could do something like this anywhere inside settings attribute set:

programs.niri.settings = {
  # ...
  layout.shadows = unsafeRawString ''
    on
    softness 30
    spread 5
    offset x=0 y=5
    draw-behind-window true
    color "#00000070"
  '';
  binds = { 
    "${Mod}+Shift+S" = unsafeRawString ''
      hotkey-overlay-title="<b>Toggle</b> <span foreground='red'>Dark</span>/Light Style" { spawn "some-script.sh"; }
    '';
    # ...
  };
};

This is just an imaginary snippet but im curious what are your thoughts. Or maybe im missing something that already exists?

EDIT: perhaps even allow mixing your existing niri.config kdl format (nodes/leafs) inside niri.settings ?

[wyyllou]

I can see a few ways that this could be done and i would be willing to make a PR for whichever is most desired:

1. Your suggestion
2. Just allowing arbitrary options under anything, perhaps it would warn the user that this is an unknown setting via a toggle under something like programs.niri.warnUnknownSettings or something more fine-grained with strings like ...ignoredUnknownSettings = [ ... ];
3. (my personal favorite) A reserved attribute that can be set under any node, something like:

programs.niri.settings = {
  # ...
  outputs.eDP-1 = {
    mode = {
      height = 1920;
      width = 1080;
    };
    scale = 1;
    extraConfig = ''
      backdrop-color "#1e1e2e"
    '';
  };
  # ..
};

(extraConfig would never be a real option in niri, but the nix convention for reserved attributes could be used if desired, so it would be __extraConfig )
It could probably also accept a set or the kdl function format and just not check them?

[Keyruu]

Really sad, that this isn't a thing, for me to use the "Layout config overrides" I could you just throw in a little KDL snippet without needing to wait for support on this. But instead I now have to rewrite my whole config to be KDL for this one feature to work. Related #1404

[kuviman]

It seems like in the next version niri will support includes, which I guess could be used for extra configuration

[cmm]

#1467 (saw this issue after submitting the nearly-trivial PR lol), maybe you try it out

[Joao-Queiroga]

I know this is coming a bit late, but I figured a way to do it in my config:
you would need this in let in:

let
    call = pkgs.lib.flip import {
      inherit
        inputs
        kdl
        docs
        binds
        settings
        ;
      inherit (pkgs) lib;
    };
    kdl = call "${inputs.niri}/kdl.nix";
    binds = call "${inputs.niri}/parse-binds.nix";
    docs = call "${inputs.niri}/generate-docs.nix";
    settings = call "${inputs.niri}/settings.nix";
  in

than use the settings options normally, and do this in the config value

    config = with inputs.niri.lib.kdl;
      (settings.render config.programs.niri.settings)
      ++ [ # your custom config
        (plain "window-rule" [
          (leaf "open-maximized-to-edges" false)
        ])
      ];